A week to go

So we have a week left in the UK. Christmas and New Year passed in a blur. We were all very conscious that it would be our last in the UK for a while, so made sure to see as many people as possible, but there are always people you miss out on. I have a lot of friends that I haven't had a chance to see before I go, and that makes me sad, but I also have the realisation that it's a busy time of year and people have a lot of other engagements. I've had to leave it up to them, quite frankly, I have enough to organise making sure that we all get to the other side of the world in one piece without any mental breakdowns!

The movers have taken the belongings that we're shipping and hopefully they'll be on their way soon. I'm not quite sure when we'll see them again. I've already had my first frustration - I have the ingredients to make Anzac biscuits, but no scales to measure them out!

There are more "lasts" coming up this week, and there will be some sad goodbyes, but there's also excitement, from me at least. It's finally starting to feel a little bit real. The house in Melbourne is ready and waiting for us. All we have to do now is get there.

Visa granted!!

So Thursday I posted saying it was my husband's 40th birthday and what a lovely present it would be if his visa was granted.

So it seems someone at Australia House agreed with me and he got an email Thursday afternoon to say his visa had been granted!

So we are doing this:

and it has put everything else into perspective. The house will sort itself out or not, the same with jobs. We're going and it's going to be great.

Birthday Present?

It's my husband's birthday today (he's 40), and I think we were both really hoping that he'd get a present from Australia House, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen.

People who applied around the same time as us are starting to get their visas, so we're hoping we won't be waiting too much longer, but today would have been a nice surprise.

It looks like we're going to have to let out our house. We're going to deal with the logistics of that next week and get it advertised. The likelihood of finding a serious buyer before we go is pretty much non-existent now, what with the slow down over Christmas and the hangover into New Year.

Here's hoping that my next update is to say the visa has been granted!

5 down, how many to go?

It sounds a bit like a prison sentence, doesn't it? 5 to 6 months to wait on your visa which you've already been told will be granted, at some point, you just have to sit around and wait for it.

We're getting close to the end of the initial estimate now. When we applied, most visas were being granted around the 5 month mark. Now apparently it's closer to the 6 month mark. That puts us smack bang into the Christmas/New Year period when the Consulate is closed, so if we're not awarded before Christmas it will be the new year.

We fly not far into the new year, so it may be quite a close call, we'll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime we've been busy sorting things out at both ends. We're fortunate enough to have somewhere to live when we get there, but we haven't sold our house here. We had a buyer, but unfortunately she was no good at maths so had to pull out of the sale. With not very long to go before we fly we're left with the very real possibility that the house won't sell and we'll be stuck paying the mortgage on an empty house. We've decided to look into renting. It won't cover the full mortgage payment each month, but is certainly better than us having to find the full amount ourselves to send back.

We've also been making lists of things we're taking and things we're not. Years' worth of books, magazines and clutter is being sacrificed ahead of the move. You don't realise how much "stuff" you have until you have to sort it all out and get rid of it. We've booked the removals/shipping company for 10 days before we fly.

I'm trying to get the 5 year old excited about the move and talk her through any worries she might have. So far, spiders, ants and missing her English grandparents are the big worries. She's excited about her new school and making new friends, which is good as she was so worried about starting school here initially. The toddler is largely oblivious and will be happy as long as she has an endless supply of fruit stars, Peppa Pig episodes and milk.

My husband swings between fear and dread, I think. I guess in a lot of ways we may as well be going to the moon as far as he's concerned - he just can't see through the flight to what's beyond. He can't conceive of living in a different country at all.

Time will tell, I guess.

So much to do

And so little time.

It seems that I'm constantly writing to do lists in my head and not achieving anything on any of them, which is quite stressful.

With around 11 weeks to go we need to sell two cars, clear a house full of stuff, decide what we're taking and how we're disposing of the things we're not taking, figure out when we'll complete on the house and where we're going to live afterwards before flying, work out if we're packing ourselves or having the shipping company do it, decide when is best to ship our things and figure out how we're going to pay for it, travel to London to get the girls' passports, buy and pack suitcases and try to arrange time to see people we'd like to say goodbye to before we go. And breathe.

That's not even taking into account Christmas and all the to do lists associated with that.

So rather than being proactive and doing something useful about it all I'm sitting here being all emo and blogging about it and getting annoyed that people aren't responding to emails and don't have the same sense of urgency that I have.

If anyone has any super organisational powers to spare, please send them my way!

The visa process

The process of applying for a visa differs quite a lot depending on the country, where you are applying from, and which type of visa you're applying for.

When we applied for my spouse visa here in the UK we needed to provide some joint bank statements and bills, our marriage certificate and proof of address. We went to Solihull and sat in the waiting room for a couple of hours. At the end of the day I had a stamp in my passport and that was that. 

To get my permanent residency I needed to sit the citizenship test. This involved answering 24 multiple choice questions in 45 minutes after studying the "Life in the UK" guide book which contained such vital information as what you should do if you knock someone's pint over in the pub and which benefits immigrants are eligible for. Four minutes after starting the test I put up my hand to indicate I was finished. I'd even had time to double check my answers. I scored 23 out of 24. With the result in hand we headed up to Liverpool where we spent 3 of the most depressing hours ever waiting for them to decide that our relationship was indeed genuine and I would be allowed to stay in the country indefinitely. I got a lovely coloured insert in my passport and the ability to come and go at will.

Applying for a spouse visa for Australia is a little different. After filling in around 15 pages of forms each, we then had to write a personal statement explaining how our relationship works, how we support each other financially and emotionally, how we divide up household responsibilities, etc. We also had to include evidence of joint financial arrangements, evidence that we are considered a couple by others (invitations addressed to both of us, Christmas and anniversary cards, etc), photos and other proofs of our relationship. We also had to account for any time we have been apart in the relationship. In addition to all of this we needed at least two Australian citizens to write stat decs asserting that our relationship was genuine and ongoing. Fortunately, I had two Australian friends here in the UK who'd spent a bit of time with us over the years, so they obliged.

After getting a giant post bag to fit everything in, we sent all this evidence off to the Consulate. Once he was assigned to a case officer, The Husband then had to get medical and police checks done. Several weeks later we heard that everything had come back ok and they didn't need any more information from us and we could expect to wait 5 - 6 months from the application date for the visa to be granted.

So now we wait. The waiting is long and boring and frustrating, but apparently necessary. I don't really understand why visas that are not allowed to be capped can be held up for so long once everything is in place, but that's bureaucracy for you.

At least we have it better than those applying for Canada. A friend has recently gone back there with her husband and she told me that not only are you not given any details for your case officer, if you do send an email to the embassy you're told that your application is taken out of the processing queue while they deal with your email, so any correspondence could hold your application up for a month each time.

We also have it better than those who applied just a few days after us. At the start of July the estimate for visa grants increased from 5-6 months to 6-8, and then 8-9.

Fingers crossed that we're at the short end of the estimate. We do have flights booked, after all...

A beginning and an end

I've been away from "home" for a long time. When you grow up in one place and move to another, it's exciting at first, and then the drudgery of grocery shopping, paying bills and doing the laundry takes over from the excitement of being in a new place and it becomes just another place that you live.

"Home" is a relative concept. It means different things to different people.  To me, it's something ethereal and not easily explained. It's a pull to a place, and to people and to a way of life. It's not so much about location, but about attitude.

I moved to the  UK in 2003. I was 28 and had no reason to stay in Melbourne. I wanted to travel and see Europe, and my job as a teacher gave me the means to do that. I was offered a couple of jobs and went with one that would allow me an instant social circle. They were employing a number of Australians and I thought it would be nice to be around others in the same situation, rather than stranded in a strange city by myself.

It was a heady time. Hey Ya! by Outkast and Are You Ready for Love by Elton John were the songs of the summer. Beyonce's Crazy in Love was filling the dance floors. I shared a house with 3 Australians and an American. We went out drinking two or three nights a week. One of my housemates got involved with the local rugby club, so we socialised a lot with them. We travelled to Paris in the half term and spent weekends in London. But soon the novelty wore off and one by one my housemates moved on. One went back to America, a couple moved to London and one went back to Melbourne. By then I had a local boyfriend, so I moved in with him and started a job in a different school.

That was over 9 years ago now and all that time I've been saying I'll go back to Australia "in a couple of years". My boyfriend became my husband and we had two children. We bought a house and built a life here, and going back to Australia became harder and harder to imagine. Our eldest daughter started school in 2011 and that was difficult, as I'd always said I wanted to be back in Australia before she started school.

When, in September 2011, friends of ours here in England upped sticks and moved to Queensland very suddenly, we decided that we'd spent enough time making excuses and it was time to do something about it. We downloaded all the forms and started collecting evidence for my husband's spouse visa application. We finally submitted the application in June 2012 and we are currently waiting for his visa to be granted.

We've purchased one way tickets to Melbourne and our house is on the market. So this is where my time in England ends, and my journey home begins.